Saturday, July 11, 2009

Just Crush My Face

The Whitney House has been batting a thousand lately, with two ripping shows last week alone, starting with Cult Ritual, Ampere, and Open Star Clusters on Wednesday. I'm not normally down for weeknight shows, but with the three-day 4th of July weekend coming right up afterwards, plus the chance to check out Cult Ritual-- and besides, house shows normally finishing earlier anyway, so why be a baby about it-- I decided to give it a shot. Turned out to be a pretty good idea, too. (Note that I'm still limping along on a laptop until my new computer shows up, which is why parts of this blog are looking crookeder than Don Mossi's baby teeth.)

Open Star Clusters (from Ct.) were first ones up, and they were friggin' cool; theirs is poppier brand of free-form noise, not quite as industrial, with one guy manipulating a bunch of interconnected effects boxes that are all sitting on a table, and two other guys bashing away on guitar and drums (I think there's usually a fourth member, but not this time). I had a chance to see these guys once before, at a Charter Oak show earlier this year-- the one with The Book Slave and Defective Fiction, I think-- but unfortunately I bailed before Open Star Clusters played. I'm definitely hanging around the next time I get a chance to see them, though, because their shit's a riot. I like to keep an eye on the drummer whenever I'm watching a band, and that's one of the keys to watching Open Star Clusters, because whomever's drumming (they switch off sometimes) is usually the one keeping the pattern that makes the most sense, while the other two guys are basically just freaking out.

Open Star Clusters have a split 7" with Dek Boo out on Pregnant (the Weird Diner folks), but since my ability to rip vinyl is sorta crippled right now, the track I'm posting here is from some live stuff that was recorded for a Z Radio podcast, which OSC has collected onto a CD that comes inside a spray-painted silver case with a big black "Z" stenciled onto it, if you're into that super-limited hand-packaged sort of thing.

I'll admit that I still haven't gotten the hang of Ampere's recorded output-- the noisier bits are nice, but the rest is a bit too emo-core for me-- but their frenetic, pointed bursts are way more destructive in a live setting, where you can just let the chaotic riffage crease your brain cells and ignore whatever it is that the singer is doing. This is 17 songs in 15 minutes type stuff, so there's no hanging around and waiting for the next song, either, which I like a lot (curiously, Ampere's set list was just a bunch of numbers).

Cult Ritual were completely face-altering, like diving head-first into a lawnmower. Here's a band that sounds like early '80s American hardcore without coming off as intentionally trying to recreate early '80s American hardcore (unlike all those awful bands that try to recreate '88 straightedge)-- it's just what they sound like. Their new LP is one of those records that, after you listen to it once, it cleans your head out of all other sounds for a week. It amuses me to read people trying to describe this stuff; these are likely the same people who didn't hear "Damaged" until 20 years after it first came out, or still can't figure out if side one or side two is better (STUPID FUCKERS!). Seriously, Cult Ritual are as hard as any band I've ever seen, and they chew right down to the same spot where bands like Void, Black Flag, SS Decontrol, and Blast dug in years ago and never let go. I used to have a 1984 Negative Approach soundboard tape (the one that ends with some dude saying, "Please don't jump off the stage... the management will shut the place down. Hüsker Dü will be on in 15 minutes") which remains absolutely the most brutal thing I have ever heard, and there was a then-unreleased song on it called "Tunnel Vision" that was pure unfiltered white noise with John Brannon's unholy guttural shriek clawing to get out from underneath it all. Cult Ritual aren't exactly like that, but listening to them does make me think about those kinds of things.

By the time they played Whitney, Cult Ritual were already sold out of the tour pressing of their new LP, but they did have the repress of their 2nd EP, which I bought. I'm posting all four tracks here, since they're the same ones that the band is giving away on their own blog site. The new LP is on a completely different level, though, so definitely try to track one down (the second EP is much more Neaderthal-like, which is awesome in itself).

Some sort of announcement for 2015 or something

Even though I'm not planning on shutting this blog down just yet, updates will continue to be minimal. Obviously Blogspot has long since kicked the bucket as far as being a useful platform for anyone who's even slightly interested in having other people see the work they're doing and maybe starting a discussion over it. For now, Tumblr has become the place where I've been doing most of my posting as far as bands and photos go, so until Tumblr dies off too, you could skip on over to there if you'd like. Or you can close the browser window and go read a zine, I've heard they've been making a comeback, even though (according to the interviews I've read) Jay Hinman's is the only one that exists so far.

What about me

For the record, I have not only lost my ability to take a joke, but I can also no longer sense danger, communicate with sea animals, see through walls, transform myself into a bucket of water or block of ice, burn a batter's bat to ashes with my fastball, fly an invisible plane, nor start fires and cause seismic waves using only mind control.

Ad policy

The labels that have enough money to buy advertising all put out shitty records

Review policy

If you sent me something I must've lost it

How to use this blog

You can browse this blog and listen to the songs without having to download them first, by clicking on the highlighted song titles. The files will open in a new window; you can either hit "Play", or you can click on "Download" up in the right-hand corner to download them to your computer, which is the preferred method, because there's usually a cool graphic (or sometimes even lyrics) when you play the files using Windows Media Player.

Also, clicking on the photos will enlarged them. I guess some people haven't figured that out yet.

Archive

Bad Writing

"Within a grainy film-still between a summer sunset and the end of times lies the post-punk squall of Weekend. Weekend filter the aggression, tempo and sneer of punk through a wall of reverb, haunting melody, feedback and primitive garage guitar.... a totally distinctive take on the history of post-punk noise rock."

Recent awesome-like stuff from those other blogs

fucking nothing, can you believe that. blogs are dead

This blog was originally intended to be a place for me to write about the records in my collection, regardless of their rarity/collectability-- or, at least, it was when I first started. Lately it's just been an excuse for me to make dumb jokes and spout off about a lot of stupid crap. Sometimes different things will be thrown in along the way just to confuse people and piss them off, which is okay. All screw-ups, wrong dates, and mis-statements will be ignored by me as if they were intentional, except for grammatical errors which will be edited and rewritten at least five or six times if necessary. Facts will often be misrepresented, as a way of mocking those people who think such things are important. Please note: This is just a hobby for me, and bands are written about here either because I own one of their records or because I've seen them play before and like them. Posting press releases for crappy bands that I have no use for is not really how I want to spend my spare time. If you want to know what kind of bands I like, just look at the sidebar to see which bands I've written about already, and you'll notice that your PR firm doesn't represent any of them. Most of the live band photos on this blog are mine, and if there's one of your band that you like then please feel free to use it, I don't care. It's your band anyway. The blog title itself was swiped from Paul Caporino-- "One Base on an Overthrow" was originally going to be the title of a M.O.T.O. record that I was going to release back in the '90s, but that never actually happened. Lucky for you, I guess.